Missouri is approaching its third straight year of dry conditions.
According to the most recent data from the U.S. Drought Monitor, 96% of the state is experiencing dry conditions. State climatologist Zach Leasor says that the state is behind on moisture, which could affect the growing season.
“Unless we see above normal precipitation soon in the rest of March and in April, we’re going to be pretty vulnerable to rapid onset of seeing some agricultural drought impacts if we don’t get some of that above normal precipitation.”
Leasor says that if Mother Nature does not bring above normal rainfall this spring, the drought this summer could get even worse.
“Right now, the soil moisture across the state, which is so important for the agricultural sector in making that water available for plants, it is much below normal for this time of year because of what we saw in February, but also soils are much drier this time, right now, then they were in March of 2023.”
As the El Niño weather pattern begins to come to an end and La Niña follows, summer could bring uncertainty. Leasor says that the state has seen this pattern eight times dating back to 1950.
“Overall, there’s a tendency for maybe a little bit of a warmer summer, but the precipitation is all over the board. So, when we flipped from El Niño to La Niña, we’ve had our wettest year on record in Missouri, which was 1973, but we’ve also had drought years like 1954 and 1988.”
He says that if drought continues for a third-straight year, the already dry soil conditions could intensify. El Niño and La Niña climate patterns affect weather across the globe through the cooling of water in the Pacific Ocean. Warmer or colder than average ocean temperatures in one part of the world can influence weather around the world.
-Missourinet